Revolution: history and future

The new issue of the magazine of social criticism “Commons” “Revolution – History and Future” is dedicated to the reflections on theory, history and strategies of left-wing movement and is connected with two anniversaries in 2017. These are 150 years from the first publishing of “Capital” by Karl Marx and 100-th anniversary of October Revolution. In the sections of the magazine, the specificity of Marxist theory, reflections on the experience and perspectives of socialism and current strategies of anti-capitalist movements are considered.

The issue is written in Ukrainian and Russian and is available in the RLS-office Kyiv.

Abstracts

Marxism: Dilemmas of Liberation Theory

Between The Poles of Politics and Theory: The Development of Academic Marxism from 1960s to The Present

Jan Hoff

Translated from: Hoff, J., 2009. “Between The Poles of Politics and Theory: The Development of Academic Marxism from 1960s to The Present”. In: Marx global. Zur Entwickling des internationalen Marx-Discurses seit 1956. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, S. 27–77. In his study Jan Hoff charts the unprecedented global boost that has been experienced by critical Marxism since the mid-1960s. Particularly the author shows the development of interpretations of Marx’s method, of critical social theory oriented towards Marx’s critique of political economy and of significant disputes concerning the different versions and interpretations of the critical project that ultimately culminated in Capital. This study investigates the ‘globalisation’ of Marx debates, the complex network of international theoretical approaches that have been devised between the poles of academia and politics, the transfer of theory and the historical development of schools of thought beyond national and linguistic borders.

Marxism and Eurocentric Diffusionism

James M. Blaut

Translated from: Blaut, J.M., 1999. “Marxism and Eurocentric diffusionism”. In: Chilcote, R. (ed.). The Political Economy of Imperialism: Critical Appraisals. New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 127–140. The article deals with the polarization of Marxist theory between the two opposing approaches to global development: Eurocentric Marxism and uniformitarian Marxism. The author argues that these approaches have different understanding of historical dynamics: while the former accepts the view that progress spread from European core through the diffusion, the latter insists that social change should be considered in non-diffusionist manner. This issue is discussed with examples from theories of the ancient society, the rise of capitalism, the theory of nationalism, the colonialism and the imperialism.

‘If we won’t give people left alternative, they will go for fascism’

KateEvans

In the interview Kate Evans explains why Rosa Luxemburg writings are still essensial for the current leftwing struggle. She em- phasizes the importance of Luxemburg’s theory of capital accumulation and its relation to the most recent phase of neoliberal economic globalization. Evans gives her own reflections on contemporary socio-economic and political processes in the World and in the Great Britain. The artist comes to the conclusion that the global society is again facing the dichotomic alternatives between socialism and fascism in the face of the capitalist crises. And this is the urgent call for the leftist movement to act.

History of The Revolutionary Movement

Kyiv “League of Struggle for The Emancipation of The Working Class” and The History of Marxism in Russian Empire

TarasBilous

Analysing the formation of the Kyiv League of Struggle Taras Bilous argues that historiography often underestimates the im- portance of Poles in spreading Marxism in Russian Empire and the formation of RSDLP, as well as the significance of student organisations for the development of revolutionary movement in Russian Empire.

‘One can not comprehend the Soviet state without understanding the revolution’

Eric Aunoble

Eric Aunoble works on the agricultural communes which functioned in the times of the Civil War. What was the real essence of the communes, both glorified and demonized by the contemporary and by the historians? The researcher explores the multi- layered revolution, the elemental counter-revolution and the nature of the Soviet Union. One can learn out-of-the-way items of information about the antiwar French left of the World War I and the origins of the French Communist Party from this interview. It also highlights the relation between the academic community of historians, authorities, and politics in contemporary France.

Revolution Looking for Socialism

Alexander Shubin

The Great Russian revolution of 1917–1922 since the spring of 1917 brought supporters of socialism to the political forefront, and in November of 1917 the course of the construction of socialism was proclaimed by dominant political forces. Socialist theorists have discussed two ways to post-capitalist society: the transition of enterprises to their groups (from the bottom) and the socialisation of economy in the system running on a single plan (from the top). The Bolsheviks and the Socialists-revo- lutionaries believed that the way the top and bottom are quite compatible. But supporters of the Soviet power and the power of the Soviets could not build a system based on the balance of such major components of the revolution as self-organization, grassroots initiative, industrial democracy on the one hand, and the unity of the economic system, its purposeful regulation. As a result, the model of post-capitalist society acquired the super-centralised nature.

The Great Russian Revolution: The People and The Power

VadimDamier

The article proposes a view on the Great Russian Revolution of 1917–1921 ‘from below’, in the context of the clash between interests and aspirations of popular masses on the one hand, and goals and policies of different powers and regimes on the other hand. It shows that revolution developed in the form of self-organization of popular masses that rejected different ways of industrial-capitalist modernization and tried to organise the wide self-governance at the place of residence and the point of production. These trends were opposed by supporters of restoration (in different forms) of ‘the old regime’ and Bolsheviks that advanced the forced modernization.

The Suppression of Historical Alternatives: Germany 1918–1920

Barrington Moore

Translated from: Moore, B., 1979. “The Suppression of Historical Alternatives: Germany 1918–1920”. In Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd. pp. 376–397. Barrington Moore argues that Germany’s de- feat in World War I and the workers’ uprising during the end of the war weakened the old regime to the point that the German Social Democratic Party did not have the need to compromise with the army and the other elites. Objective conditions for the formation of liberal socialist state that could have had the strength to counter the Nazi challenge, which emerged a decade later, already existed.

‘Our new yellow-and-blue milestones significantly differ from the three-colored ones’: The Phenomenon of ‘Smenovekhovtsy’ in Ukrainian Political Emigration

Maksym Mazypchuk

This article deals with the circumstances of the emergence of the Soviet sentiments in the Ukrainian political emigration envi- ronment. Conscious choice of the Ukrainian emigrants to recognise the achievements of Soviet Ukraine and returning to their homeland are analyzed. The social structure of Ukrainian political emigration, its ideological diversity, and its departure from Russian are determined. The article highlights that Ukrainian “Smenovekhovtsy” saw the potential of Soviet power in conducting Ukrainianization and further development of the Ukrainian SSR.

In the article the author compares Soviet (1940–60s) and post-Soviet protest movements in Russia. He claims that these two kinds of movements follow two different ‘political epistemologies’. While Soviet ‘metaphysical’ protesters had a priori assump- tions in mind rooted in communist ideology, post-Soviet protesters are ‘positivists’ who believe they trust observable ‘facts’.

In Search of Socialism: The Past and The Future

On Analysis of The Russian Revolution

Roman Rosdolsky

Translated from: Rosdolsky, R., 1978. “Zur Analyse der russischen Revolution”. In: Ulf Wolter (Hrsg.): Die Sozialismusdebatte. Historische und aktuelle Fragen des Sozialismus. Berlin (West): Olle & Wolter, S. 203–236. Roman Rozdolsky considers the historical significance of the revolution of 1917 and the further evolution of the Soviet regime. Rozdolsky explores how the weak development of productive forces led to the fact that the October Revolution failed to secure the socialist character of develop- ment and led to the domination of the bureaucracy over the working class. He gives a brilliant Marxist analysis of Stalinism as a historical phenomenon. Also Rozdolsky’s reflections (1958) on the prospects of socialism in the Soviet Union and the world would be interesting for the present-day reader.

How to Research The October Revolution and The Soviet Society from The Perspective of Marx’s Methodology?

AndreyKoryakovtsev

Most of the facts of the October Revolution are widely known. However, disputes about it do not cease till now. The reason for this is not only in the ideologization of this topic itself, but also in the unsettled status of a methodologicall issues of the research. We can say that from the perspective of the Marxist methodology the October revolution is poorly understood, despite the great amount of Marxist literature about it. This article focuses on methodological aspect of the research.

Revolutions Lost, or What is Left of 1917?

Artemy Magun

The article argues that the Russian revolution has left us not the answers but open questions. It was an attempt to reconcile nationalism and universalism, plebeianism and high culture, spontaneity and organisation: the attempt failed, but the issues persist.

The Communist Idea and The Question of Terror

Alain Badiou

Translated from: Badiou, A., 2013. The Communist Idea and the Question of Terror. In: Slavoj Žižek (ed.). TheIdeaofCommunism, Vol. 2. London; New York: Verso, pp. 1–11. In his text, Badiou raises two essential questions: (1) is it necessarily that violence flows from the communist idea of social transformation, and (2) is it absolutely indispensible that the ways of its realization discredit the communist idea itself. By distinguishing several patterns of revolutionary violence, Badiou demonstrates that the totalitarian hypothesis of communism makes a revolutionary violence unjustified, because it considers the bourgeois state as an institution whose nature lies in removal of the class antagonism potentially. Obviously, says Badiou, albeit the revolutionary terror is class-oriented, its ultimate goal, however, is not to subjugate the oppressed, but to destruct the entire social framework of oppression as such. Hence, the problem of communist terror, on his account, is not the terror itself, but the fact that the revolutionary community is outwardly forced to link it with what it is directed against, e. i., with the elements of the class state.

The Soviet Revolution 1905–1945: Reflections on One Hundred Anniversary

GeorgiDerluguian

The known sociologist Georgi Derluguian reflects on the world-systemic context of the Russian revolution. He puts the rev- olution in the context of Russian position as a semi-periphery in the world-system, discusses whether there was a realistic alternative to the Soviet Union dissolution, and the perspectives of the egalitarian society after its collapse.

The 21st Century: Is There An Alternative (to Socialism)?

Minqi Li

Translated from: Li, M., 2013. “The 21st Century: Is There An Alternative (to Socialism)?”. In: Science& Society, 77(1), pp. 10–43. In the light of the great capitalist failures over the past two decades, it is necessary to reevaluate both the historical performance of, and historical justification for, socialism. Even if one follows the logic of mainstream economic theory, there is no clear theo- retical case why socialism is necessarily inferior to capitalism. There is no clear evidence that the socialist economies performed worse than the capitalist economies in term of economic growth. But there is evidence that the socialist economies met the population’s basic needs better than the capitalist economies, especially with countries in the periphery and semi-periphery included in the comparison. In the 21st century, the historical task of socialism is no longer about how to successfully compete against capitalism in the capitalist world system. Instead, as capitalism ceases to be a viable historical system, socialism may prove to be the only viable solution to the fundamental crisis confronting humanity.

‘Social revolutions were often mythologized by Marxists’

Pavlo Kutuev

The interview is opening up the topic of the rise and the fall of modernization theory in the framework of ideological dynamics. The discussion touches upon the interrelations between classical euro-centric modernization theory and its critics represented by left-wing theoreticians, e.g., world-systems scholars. The interactions between modernity and capitalism is addressed, while the potential resurgence of thinking in terms of multiple modernities is discussed.

Red Plenty Platforms

Nick Dyer-Witheford

Translated from: Dyer-Witheford, N., 2016. “Red Plenty Platforms”. In: CultureMachine, 14(98), pp. 5–30. This article looks at the most direct through-line from Soviet cybernetics continuing attempts to theorise forms of economic planning based on labour time algorithms and super-computing. The author then discusses how concerns about authoritarian central planning might be affected by social media and software agents, before going on to consider whether planning is redundant in a world of automata, copying and replication. In partial answer to that last question, ‘Red Plenty Platforms’ scans the role of cybernet- ics in the planetary bio-crisis, concluding with some general observations about cybernetics on today’s ‘communist horizon’.

Strategy of struggle: between reform and revolution

Global Labour: A Not-so-grand Finale and Perhaps a New Beginning

Marcelvander Linden

Translated from: Linden, M. van der, 2016. “Global Labour: A Not-so-grand Finale and Perhaps a New Beginning”. In: Global Labour Journal, 7(2), pp. 201–210. Traditional labour movements are in trouble almost everywhere. They have been severely enfeebled by the political and economic changes of the last forty years. Their core consists out of three forms of social movement organisations: cooperatives, trade unions and workers’ parties. All three organisational types are in decline, though this is an uneven development with vast differences between countries and regions. We are living through a transitional stage in which old organisational structures no longer seem to work well, while new structures are still in their early stages.

Elusive Revolt: The Contradictory Rise of Middle-class Politics

Cihan Tuğal

Translated from: Tuğal, C., 2015. “Elusive revolt: The contradictory rise of middle-class politics”. In: Thesis Eleven, 130 (1), pp. 74–95. What lies behind the amalgam of liberalism, elitism, anti-capitalism, and fascistic elements in today’s street politics? This essay analyses this mixture in the light of the shifting class locations of middle strata. Intensified business dominance has not only proletarianized some middle strata but has led to a dry life for even the privileged ones. Middle classes are now taking to the streets to reclaim their specialness. Their exact agendas might not be identical throughout the globe, but a kindred spirit of creativity and aestheticized occupation unites disparate geographies of revolt. Liberal and radical analyses of the wave of revolt miss its most significant characteristics, which only a re-theorisation of the new petty bourgeoisie can capture. The essay outlines a research agenda that would explore the multiple dimensions of middle-class formation, as well as the post-capitalist trajectories that might (or might not) result from further politicization.

The radical left is one of the most chaotic and diverse party families’

Luke March

Translated from: March, L., 2017. «Interview #17: Luke March on Left Populism». In: Political Observer on Populism. This inter- view with Luke March discusses about left-wing populist actors across Europe, the US and Latin America, the legacy of the Communist past, and the evolution of different families of left parties. We also talk about the Great Recession, the migrants crisis, Brexit, neo-liberalism, and the possible directions for the Left.

Oppositions

Susan Watkins

Translated from: Watkins, S., 2016. “Oppositions”. In: New Left Review, 98, pp. 5–30. After years of economic crisis and social protest, the cartel parties of the extreme centre now face a challenge to their dominance from outside-left forces in a number of Western countries. Contours of the emergent left oppositions, their platforms and figureheads, from Tsipras to Corbyn, Sanders to Mélenchon, Grillo to Iglesias.

Reviews

The Bolsheviks’ Project of Subjectivity. Review of Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary Under Stalin by Jochen Hellbeck.

Timofey Rakov

In this article author reviewed the book of J. Hellbeck about Soviet subjectivity in Post-revolutionary era, especially in Stalin’s period. Author analyses how Hellbeck works with diaries, his main historical source and to what conclusions about Self, Bol- shevism and Stalinism does Hellbeck come to.

Black Earth’ of Timothy Snyder: Warping History

Enzo Traverso

Translated from Traverso, E., 2016. “Warping History”. In: Jacobin. In this review the Marxist historian Enzo Traverso, notorious specialist of Holocaust Studies and Politics of Memory, analyses the recent Timothy Snyder’s book Black Earth and argues that the latter intentionally misuses the horrors of the Holocaust in the service of Zionist and neoconservative platitudes.